Monday, June 20, 2005

Like many Eurosceptics, I have always been in a quandary over the issue of East European membership of the EU. For Britain’s sake, I always supported it. At the worst, it dilutes the power of the old Europe Socialists in General and France in particular. At best if was a glimmer of light at the end of the tunnel. Maybe a club of 25 would fall to pieces faster.
From the point of the new members, I have never been convinced that it was a good idea for them. The last thing that the former Serfs of the USSR needed was to become EU Serfs. On the other hand, if that’s what they want, I was always willing to support that.
Now following the breakdown of budget talks, Britain has been cast as the bad boy of Europe.

Newspapers in Poland, the largest new member, singled Mr Blair out for criticism, arguing that he had at best delayed, and at worst scuppered Poland's chances of securing around £40 billion in aid from the next EU budget "Britain torpedoed a summit which would have brought in tens of billions of euros for Eastern Europe," the Right-of-centre daily Rzeczpospolita said.

Just a few points for you to ponder:

Without strong UK support, the chances are you would still not be members, so your EU aid would have been a nice round number.

Unlike most other members, the UK welcomes you as workers. In fact, the British Public wants to know when more Polish Plumbers are going to come.

Without the UK, Social Europe would rip holes through your economy faster than it is already.

It was France, not Britain that decided that the farmers in new member states would receive far less CAP payments than their western counterparts.